Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:00:24 +0000, Invisible wrote:
> 
>> Kyle wrote:
>>> That's funny.  Been there.
>> "...I'm too late." ;-)
>>
>>>> Do you have *any idea* how long it takes to compile the Linux kernel?
>>>> I mean, damn, how *big* is it?? I thought the final binary was only a
>>>> few KB in size...
>>> The wait is even more fun the second time around, after you realize you
>>> forgot to configure a necessary driver into your custom kernel. :D
>> I still don't entirely "get" why you would ever recompile the OS kernel.
>> I mean, all it does is memory allocation, interrupt scheduling, etc.
>> What's to change?
> 
> Driver support beyond what's in your shipping kernel.
> 
>> Also... Gentoo is the only Linux distro I've ever seen where compiling
>> the kernel was actually successful. Every other distro managed to either
>> spit cryptic error messages at me, or just leave me with a nonbootable
>> system.
> 
> Well, I've compiled on RedHat and on openSUSE, as well as having 
> installed Slackware and Linux From Scratch and compiled kernels for them.
> 
> Try LFS, that'll really teach you a lot about linux, even if you don't 
> get a bootable system.
> 
> Jim

It's not too hard to get a bootable LFS system - and if it is hard and 
you get it to boot, then you've learned a lot!

I must admit, I cheat and use the automated build now days.

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